This is the story of my nontraditional transformation from a Physics/Spanish/Chemistry/Math grad into a physician. I'm a proud member of the class of 2016 at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. The blog title will be edited to reflect the current stage of my transformation: Pre-Medical, Medical, Residential, then Doctoral. Read more about me in the My Story tab below. Enjoy!

Other Stuff

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

My Little Backyard Garden

I am currently on a one-week break between the Spring and Summer semesters - almost done with my M1 year. M2, Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and Step 1 are rapidly cresting the horizon, but for now I am quite content to fixate on more quotidian pursuits - like gardening!

With Tiny Wife currently living up her Big Life in Mexico, I decided I would kick-start my small, backyard garden. With my landlord's permission, I started the labor-intensive process of removing the lawn by hand. While you can't see it here, this involved me cutting lines in the grass with the shovel, then sort of "rolling up" the grass, which is a little harder than it sounds...:

Once the grass was gone, it was time to first hoe, then rake the dirt to make it all soft, removing the larger rocks (and glass and old asphalt and rusty coffee cans) in the process:

Look at all that fresh earth, ready for planting! I tacked up some chicken wire and got to work getting some starter plants in the ground.

I have four tomato plants, two poblano pepper plants, one cucumber plant, and four bell pepper plants:

This area is for seedlings. Currently, I have two rows of carrots and two rows of green beans planted, but I am planning on 2-3 rows of sugar snap peas, per Wife's request:

Other than that, this break has consisted of lots of unpacking of boxes because OH YEAH - we moved, as evidenced by the fact that we now have a backyard for a garden. I've also been doing a lot of sleeping (minus the four-hour night before waking up at 4am to bring Wife to the airport), watching of television (huzzah for guilt-free sloth time!), eating (I love my cast-iron skillet!), and sitting on my porch sipping tea and reading / listening to audio books. Last night I hung out with a couple of friends, and it was a nice break from solitude. So yeah... It is a good break so far.